Andrew Kwok
Biographic Data
| ID | 217954 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Andrew Kwok |
| GIVEN NAMES | Andrew |
| FAMILY NAME | Kwok |
| SIGNATURE | KWOK A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Texas A&M University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0401-0420 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 74 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Breaking through the teacher pipeline
This descriptive mixed method study examines one national program that engages individuals towards teaching: Breakthrough Collaborative. We examine alumni surveys of over 1100 participants enrolled between 2010 and 2023 to understand the teaching motivations of individuals who matriculated through the program. We quantitatively analyze whether early teaching experiences encouraged participants to become a teacher and how long individuals stayed i…
Where Have All the Schoolteachers Gone
Equity Orientations of Novice Teachers
Operationalizing equity is vital for classrooms, but there is limited evidence about whether and how novice teachers enact it. This qualitative study unearths novice teachers’ beliefs about student diversity through an open-ended survey item administered to a large teacher induction program in California. These teachers operationalize equity through three levels of teacher resistance (inclusivity, exposure to social justice, and countering system…
Tutoring the Tutors
Background: Despite intense national focus on the positive impact of tutoring, there is little empirical evidence on how best to train tutors. This is particularly pertinent given that tutors could serve as a potential pipeline into teaching. Objective: This mixed-methods study explores the implementation of modules about developing knowledge for high-quality instructional materials for tutor professional development. Research Design: The modules…
Are they actually getting it
Beginning Teachers and Strategies for Asset-Based Pedagogy
Purpose: Asset-based pedagogy (ABP) values what students bring to the classroom and is responsive to their individual needs. Yet teachers, particularly beginners, fail to integrate these types of strategies throughout K–12 classrooms. It is imperative to explore to what extent beginning teachers understand ABP as well as the variation within who knows what information. Research Methods/Approach: We examine roughly 2,000 novice teachers’ responses…
Why Do You Want to Be a Teacher? A Natural Language Processing Approach
Heightened concerns about the health of the teaching profession highlight the importance of studying the early teacher pipeline. This exploratory, descriptive article examines preservice teachers’ expressed motivation for pursuing a teaching career. Using data from a large teacher education program in Texas, we use a natural language processing algorithm to categorize into topical groups roughly 2,800 essay responses to the prompt, “Explain why y…
Clinical Teaching Learning Trajectory
Field supervisors are central to clinical teaching, but little is known about how their feedback informs preservice teachers’ (PSTs) development. This sequential mixed methods study examines over 3,000 supervisor observation evaluations. We qualitatively code supervisor written feedback, which indicates two broad pedagogical categories and nine separate skills. We quantize these feedback codes to identify the variation in the presence of these co…
Rate your coach
This quantitative study explores novice teacher and coach ratings on coaching skills. Annual surveys were collected from respondents throughout a two-year programme to learn more about their induction experiences. We run a series of t-tests to identify differences between respondent groups and over time as well as multiple linear regressions to predict for characteristics that are associated with respondent ratings of coaching skills. Results fro…
Backtalk
Research has shown that having a diverse teacher workforce benefits students, but the population of teachers remains predominantly white, even as the student population becomes increasingly diverse. Andrew Kwok and Brendan Bartanen analyzed data from college applications in Texas and found that interest in teacher certification has declined in the past decade more than interest in other professions. Promisingly, the racial makeup of college appli…
Exploring a Teacher Residency as a Recruitment and Retention Strategy for High-Need Districts
Effective recruitment and retention strategies of teachers remain elusive for school districts. This study examines the pilot implementation of a year-long teacher residency program throughout four high-needs districts. This program embeds eight residents in these schools and provides various teacher preparation supports to support these beginning professionals to sustain within the classroom. We interview district administrators about their recr…
First-Year Teacher Needs in the Urban Classroom
Classroom Management Coaching for First-Year Urban Teachers
This qualitative study explores one urban district's purpose, design, and implementation of a unique classroom management coaching program for first-year teachers (FYTs). Through interviews of coaches, assistant principals, and district administrators, we identify why and how this program supported FYTs’ struggles with classroom management. Results highlight difficulties related to culturally responsive classroom management, which was mitigated b…
Dispelling Deficit Framing
Our study explored preservice teacher beliefs about enacting culturally relevant literacy instructions in their future classrooms. We surveyed PSTs from one teacher education programme across three cohorts, with one cohort completing both pre- and post-survey responses. Engaging in constant comparative analysis of PSTs’ beliefs about the intersection of student diversity and literacy instruction revealed perspectives along a continuum between equ…
Facilitating Classroom Management Development in Teacher Education
This study investigates the development of high school pre-service teachers’ knowledge in classroom management. Data were collected from their classroom management plans, which were submitted at the beginning of one preparation course and revised at the end. This course provided extensive instruction, practice, and assignments incorporating key classroom management strategies. Analyses indicate how focusing on certain aspects of classroom managem…
From Interest to Entry
Strengthening teacher supply is a key policy objective for K–12 public education, but understanding of the early teacher pipeline remains limited. In this descriptive analysis, we leverage the universe of applications to a large public university in Texas from 2009 to 2020 to examine the pipeline into teacher education and employment as a K–12 public school teacher. A unique feature of Texas’s centralized higher education application is that it s…
Teacher Shortages
Pre-service teachers’ motivations to enter the profession
In this large-scale qualitative study, we use an emergent design to explore pre-service teachers’ (PST) motivations to enter the profession. We open-code 2,798 PSTs responses to the directive, ‘Explain why you decided to become a teacher’, given over the course of a six-year period from one large Texas teacher preparation programme. Using constant comparative analysis, we identified three categories of motivation into the teaching profession: alt…
Examining early field experiences in teacher education
Match games
This mixed methods study investigates novice teacher and coach survey responses from a two-year induction programme to learn more about what makes a good match. We qualitatively analyse comments from all novice teachers and coaches who were paired across years and find shared themes of structural, professional, and personality similarities as well as the importance of coaching support prominent throughout novice teacher responses. We also use log…
Managing classroom management preparation in teacher education
Classroom management preparation has long been insufficient and stagnant, creating issues that disproportionately impacts beginning teacher success. I propose the CM PReP framework to guide teacher educators towards redesigning courses to appropriately prepare pre-service teachers to manage the needs of current students. By fixating classroom management courses around culture, methods, practice, relationships, and partnerships, teacher education …
Flexible or Rigid? Exploring Preservice Teachers’ Classroom Preferences
Understanding preservice teachers’ (PSTs) classroom preferences offers the potential to inform school hiring and reduce early career turnover. This large-scale qualitative study ( n = 2,798) explores rich PST responses to the open-ended survey item: “Describe a classroom setting in which you would enjoy teaching.” Results indicate three categories of characteristics (classroom setting, pedagogical strategies, and student characteristics) and from…
Teacher Candidates’ Developing Beliefs About Diversity and Its Role in Effective Literacy Teaching
This study explored teacher candidates’ understandings of diversity, equity, and equality, and how these beliefs differed throughout teacher preparation. Researchers surveyed teacher candidates at the beginning and at the completion of their program to compare responses to a question inquiring about student demographics in the context of literacy education. Researchers found that teacher candidates’ understandings of effective literacy instructio…
Examining Clinical Teaching Observation Scores as a Measure of Preservice Teacher Quality
We draw on rich longitudinal data from one of the largest teacher education programs in Texas to examine the properties of rubric-based observational evaluations of preservice teachers (PSTs) during clinical teaching. Using a variance decomposition approach, we find that little of the variation in observation scores is attributable to actual differences between PSTs. Instead, differences in scores largely reflect differences in the rating standar…
Classroom Management Actions of Beginning Urban Teachers
This descriptive, mixed methods study of one interim certification program explores first year urban teachers’ classroom management actions. This study investigates what strategies teachers implement to manage the classroom from programmatic surveys of 87 first-year teachers and interviews, field visits, video recordings, and journals of five case participants. Results indicate that teachers used behavioral, academic, and relational strategies to…
Recruitment or Preparation? Investigating the Effects of Teacher Characteristics and Student Teaching
Some believe the solution to improving instructional quality in K-12 schools lies in identifying and recruiting certain kinds of individuals to the profession (e.g., academically talented, stronger commitment). Others believe that talented or committed individuals cannot become effective or enduring teachers without adequate preparation. Most prior literature examines either recruitment or preparation, rather than weighing evidence for both simul…
Teacher Shortages
Relationships Between Instructional Quality and Classroom Management for Beginning Urban Teachers
This mixed-methods study explores the differences in 1st-year urban teachers’ classroom management beliefs and actions. The teachers in this study were in their first year of teaching in an urban context concurrent with their participation in a teacher education program offered at a large public university. Using program-wide surveys of 89 elementary and secondary teachers and qualitative data from five case participants, this study explores teac…
Examining Clinical Teaching Observation Scores as a Measure of Preservice Teacher Quality
We draw on rich longitudinal data from one of the largest teacher education programs in Texas to examine the properties of rubric-based observational evaluations of preservice teachers (PSTs) during clinical teaching. Using a variance decomposition approach, we find that little of the variation in observation scores is attributable to actual differences between PSTs. Instead, differences in scores largely reflect differences in the rating standar…
Classroom Management Actions of Beginning Urban Teachers
This descriptive, mixed methods study of one interim certification program explores first year urban teachers’ classroom management actions. This study investigates what strategies teachers implement to manage the classroom from programmatic surveys of 87 first-year teachers and interviews, field visits, video recordings, and journals of five case participants. Results indicate that teachers used behavioral, academic, and relational strategies to…
Teachers’ Preferences to Teach Underserved Students
To increase the supply of teachers into underserved schools, teacher educators and policymakers commonly use two approaches: (a) recruit individuals who already report strong preferences to work in underserved schools or (b) design pre-service preparation to increase preferences. Using survey and administrative data on more than 1,000 teachers in a large, urban district, this study provides some of the first district-level evidence for both appro…
From Interest to Entry
Strengthening teacher supply is a key policy objective for K–12 public education, but understanding of the early teacher pipeline remains limited. In this descriptive analysis, we leverage the universe of applications to a large public university in Texas from 2009 to 2020 to examine the pipeline into teacher education and employment as a K–12 public school teacher. A unique feature of Texas’s centralized higher education application is that it s…
Classroom Management Coaching for First-Year Urban Teachers
This qualitative study explores one urban district's purpose, design, and implementation of a unique classroom management coaching program for first-year teachers (FYTs). Through interviews of coaches, assistant principals, and district administrators, we identify why and how this program supported FYTs’ struggles with classroom management. Results highlight difficulties related to culturally responsive classroom management, which was mitigated b…
Flexible or Rigid? Exploring Preservice Teachers’ Classroom Preferences
Understanding preservice teachers’ (PSTs) classroom preferences offers the potential to inform school hiring and reduce early career turnover. This large-scale qualitative study ( n = 2,798) explores rich PST responses to the open-ended survey item: “Describe a classroom setting in which you would enjoy teaching.” Results indicate three categories of characteristics (classroom setting, pedagogical strategies, and student characteristics) and from…
Teacher Candidates’ Developing Beliefs About Diversity and Its Role in Effective Literacy Teaching
This study explored teacher candidates’ understandings of diversity, equity, and equality, and how these beliefs differed throughout teacher preparation. Researchers surveyed teacher candidates at the beginning and at the completion of their program to compare responses to a question inquiring about student demographics in the context of literacy education. Researchers found that teacher candidates’ understandings of effective literacy instructio…
Why Do You Want to Be a Teacher? A Natural Language Processing Approach
Heightened concerns about the health of the teaching profession highlight the importance of studying the early teacher pipeline. This exploratory, descriptive article examines preservice teachers’ expressed motivation for pursuing a teaching career. Using data from a large teacher education program in Texas, we use a natural language processing algorithm to categorize into topical groups roughly 2,800 essay responses to the prompt, “Explain why y…
Examining early field experiences in teacher education
Recruitment or Preparation? Investigating the Effects of Teacher Characteristics and Student Teaching
Some believe the solution to improving instructional quality in K-12 schools lies in identifying and recruiting certain kinds of individuals to the profession (e.g., academically talented, stronger commitment). Others believe that talented or committed individuals cannot become effective or enduring teachers without adequate preparation. Most prior literature examines either recruitment or preparation, rather than weighing evidence for both simul…
Teachers’ Preferences to Teach Underserved Students
To increase the supply of teachers into underserved schools, teacher educators and policymakers commonly use two approaches: (a) recruit individuals who already report strong preferences to work in underserved schools or (b) design pre-service preparation to increase preferences. Using survey and administrative data on more than 1,000 teachers in a large, urban district, this study provides some of the first district-level evidence for both appro…
Relationships Between Instructional Quality and Classroom Management for Beginning Urban Teachers
This mixed-methods study explores the differences in 1st-year urban teachers’ classroom management beliefs and actions. The teachers in this study were in their first year of teaching in an urban context concurrent with their participation in a teacher education program offered at a large public university. Using program-wide surveys of 89 elementary and secondary teachers and qualitative data from five case participants, this study explores teac…
Classroom Management Actions of Beginning Urban Teachers
This descriptive, mixed methods study of one interim certification program explores first year urban teachers’ classroom management actions. This study investigates what strategies teachers implement to manage the classroom from programmatic surveys of 87 first-year teachers and interviews, field visits, video recordings, and journals of five case participants. Results indicate that teachers used behavioral, academic, and relational strategies to…
Match games
This mixed methods study investigates novice teacher and coach survey responses from a two-year induction programme to learn more about what makes a good match. We qualitatively analyse comments from all novice teachers and coaches who were paired across years and find shared themes of structural, professional, and personality similarities as well as the importance of coaching support prominent throughout novice teacher responses. We also use log…
Managing classroom management preparation in teacher education
Classroom management preparation has long been insufficient and stagnant, creating issues that disproportionately impacts beginning teacher success. I propose the CM PReP framework to guide teacher educators towards redesigning courses to appropriately prepare pre-service teachers to manage the needs of current students. By fixating classroom management courses around culture, methods, practice, relationships, and partnerships, teacher education …
Flexible or Rigid? Exploring Preservice Teachers’ Classroom Preferences
Understanding preservice teachers’ (PSTs) classroom preferences offers the potential to inform school hiring and reduce early career turnover. This large-scale qualitative study ( n = 2,798) explores rich PST responses to the open-ended survey item: “Describe a classroom setting in which you would enjoy teaching.” Results indicate three categories of characteristics (classroom setting, pedagogical strategies, and student characteristics) and from…
Teacher Candidates’ Developing Beliefs About Diversity and Its Role in Effective Literacy Teaching
This study explored teacher candidates’ understandings of diversity, equity, and equality, and how these beliefs differed throughout teacher preparation. Researchers surveyed teacher candidates at the beginning and at the completion of their program to compare responses to a question inquiring about student demographics in the context of literacy education. Researchers found that teacher candidates’ understandings of effective literacy instructio…
Examining Clinical Teaching Observation Scores as a Measure of Preservice Teacher Quality
We draw on rich longitudinal data from one of the largest teacher education programs in Texas to examine the properties of rubric-based observational evaluations of preservice teachers (PSTs) during clinical teaching. Using a variance decomposition approach, we find that little of the variation in observation scores is attributable to actual differences between PSTs. Instead, differences in scores largely reflect differences in the rating standar…
Pre-service teachers’ motivations to enter the profession
In this large-scale qualitative study, we use an emergent design to explore pre-service teachers’ (PST) motivations to enter the profession. We open-code 2,798 PSTs responses to the directive, ‘Explain why you decided to become a teacher’, given over the course of a six-year period from one large Texas teacher preparation programme. Using constant comparative analysis, we identified three categories of motivation into the teaching profession: alt…
Examining early field experiences in teacher education
Dispelling Deficit Framing
Our study explored preservice teacher beliefs about enacting culturally relevant literacy instructions in their future classrooms. We surveyed PSTs from one teacher education programme across three cohorts, with one cohort completing both pre- and post-survey responses. Engaging in constant comparative analysis of PSTs’ beliefs about the intersection of student diversity and literacy instruction revealed perspectives along a continuum between equ…
Facilitating Classroom Management Development in Teacher Education
This study investigates the development of high school pre-service teachers’ knowledge in classroom management. Data were collected from their classroom management plans, which were submitted at the beginning of one preparation course and revised at the end. This course provided extensive instruction, practice, and assignments incorporating key classroom management strategies. Analyses indicate how focusing on certain aspects of classroom managem…
From Interest to Entry
Strengthening teacher supply is a key policy objective for K–12 public education, but understanding of the early teacher pipeline remains limited. In this descriptive analysis, we leverage the universe of applications to a large public university in Texas from 2009 to 2020 to examine the pipeline into teacher education and employment as a K–12 public school teacher. A unique feature of Texas’s centralized higher education application is that it s…
Teacher Shortages
Rate your coach
This quantitative study explores novice teacher and coach ratings on coaching skills. Annual surveys were collected from respondents throughout a two-year programme to learn more about their induction experiences. We run a series of t-tests to identify differences between respondent groups and over time as well as multiple linear regressions to predict for characteristics that are associated with respondent ratings of coaching skills. Results fro…
Backtalk
Research has shown that having a diverse teacher workforce benefits students, but the population of teachers remains predominantly white, even as the student population becomes increasingly diverse. Andrew Kwok and Brendan Bartanen analyzed data from college applications in Texas and found that interest in teacher certification has declined in the past decade more than interest in other professions. Promisingly, the racial makeup of college appli…
Exploring a Teacher Residency as a Recruitment and Retention Strategy for High-Need Districts
Effective recruitment and retention strategies of teachers remain elusive for school districts. This study examines the pilot implementation of a year-long teacher residency program throughout four high-needs districts. This program embeds eight residents in these schools and provides various teacher preparation supports to support these beginning professionals to sustain within the classroom. We interview district administrators about their recr…
First-Year Teacher Needs in the Urban Classroom
Classroom Management Coaching for First-Year Urban Teachers
This qualitative study explores one urban district's purpose, design, and implementation of a unique classroom management coaching program for first-year teachers (FYTs). Through interviews of coaches, assistant principals, and district administrators, we identify why and how this program supported FYTs’ struggles with classroom management. Results highlight difficulties related to culturally responsive classroom management, which was mitigated b…
Tutoring the Tutors
Background: Despite intense national focus on the positive impact of tutoring, there is little empirical evidence on how best to train tutors. This is particularly pertinent given that tutors could serve as a potential pipeline into teaching. Objective: This mixed-methods study explores the implementation of modules about developing knowledge for high-quality instructional materials for tutor professional development. Research Design: The modules…
Are they actually getting it
Beginning Teachers and Strategies for Asset-Based Pedagogy
Purpose: Asset-based pedagogy (ABP) values what students bring to the classroom and is responsive to their individual needs. Yet teachers, particularly beginners, fail to integrate these types of strategies throughout K–12 classrooms. It is imperative to explore to what extent beginning teachers understand ABP as well as the variation within who knows what information. Research Methods/Approach: We examine roughly 2,000 novice teachers’ responses…
Why Do You Want to Be a Teacher? A Natural Language Processing Approach
Heightened concerns about the health of the teaching profession highlight the importance of studying the early teacher pipeline. This exploratory, descriptive article examines preservice teachers’ expressed motivation for pursuing a teaching career. Using data from a large teacher education program in Texas, we use a natural language processing algorithm to categorize into topical groups roughly 2,800 essay responses to the prompt, “Explain why y…
Clinical Teaching Learning Trajectory
Field supervisors are central to clinical teaching, but little is known about how their feedback informs preservice teachers’ (PSTs) development. This sequential mixed methods study examines over 3,000 supervisor observation evaluations. We qualitatively code supervisor written feedback, which indicates two broad pedagogical categories and nine separate skills. We quantize these feedback codes to identify the variation in the presence of these co…
Psychology (24 works) · Teacher Education and Leadership Studies (23 works) · Mathematics education (21 works) · Pedagogy (20 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Teacher education (12 works) · Medical education (9 works) · Medicine (9 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · Qualitative research (7 works)